Hello Everyone,

I am new here and I am very glad that Mr. Charras and his supporters
created this very good Open Source Program. So far is the best open
source electronic design program I have seen. Thanks so much.

I have a question for creating symbols on Eeschema. I am trying to
modify some symbols for some libraries I am creating and I have not
found the way to change the grid to be smaller once I am inside the
Library Editor. I can change the grid when I am makig the schematic,
but is it possible to change the grid inside Library Editor?

If someone can help me I will really appreciate it.

Best regards,

Eduardo Bonilla

Edouard Greiffiths wrote:

Yeah, I think this is due to the fact that the fill zone is constituted of edge to edge segments and the program does not allow you to go below a certain segment thickness (you can choose it in the fill zone contextual menu). From what I saw in the code it is limited to 5 mils anyway but this restriction could be lifted. Indeed these segments could be made thinner, maybe it was a conservative choice not to make them thinner but with the present workforce under the machine hood it should be feasible. I think this could be changed fairly easily.

I think thinner is bad. if a fill is made of smaller than the minimum trace width allowed by your pcb manufacturer then there will be problems. I know that protel dxp can make perfectly smooth fills with 20mil traces, so this is doable. If you look at the gerbview help file in the rs274x section, it describes polygons. Really you should just draw the outline. maybe in the cad program it could filled with lines going horizonatal / vertical (protel does it this way), but in the gerber file, I think it should be those G36/G37 codes. I haven't taken a look at this code yet, but I intend to.

a related question: has anyone tried to do a DRC "List Unconn" when the connection is made by a Fill? I've got this board I'm about ready to mill; the bottom is a dedicated ground plane with vias at each ground pin. so those connections should be made by the filled zone on the bottom side of the board. DRC says they aren't connected.

-ryan williams

Yeah, I think this is due to the fact that the fill zone is constituted
of edge to edge segments and the program does not allow you to go below
a certain segment thickness (you can choose it in the fill zone
contextual menu). From what I saw in the code it is limited to 5 mils
anyway but this restriction could be lifted. Indeed these segments
could be made thinner, maybe it was a conservative choice not to make
them thinner but with the present workforce under the machine hood it
should be feasible. I think this could be changed fairly easily.

Edouard Greiffiths wrote:

Bingo! This fixed the problem. Now the contours of the fill zone look
much nicer (smoother). I think we still miss the trimming of spurs to
make it really good for practical etching at least with hobbyist means.
Those spurs occur wherever the fill zone gets too thin, say smaller
that the track width. I couldn't find a way to make it happen, it looks
more complicated.

I will post before/after results so you'll be able to check for
yourselves if it is an improvement or not. Then I could ask to
integrate it in one of the next releases

Hi,

Thank you for the try

I looked at the corrected board and still, there is a thinner but present stairs pattern.
It is only a crossing of horizontal and vertical lines but thinner than before.
Even the conversion to gerber recreate the same pattern.

Is it possible to make diagonal lines like the traces?
A kind of a contour that can be associated and generated with each trace is maybe a way?

Edouard Greiffiths wrote:

Bingo! This fixed the problem. Now the contours of the fill zone look much nicer (smoother). I think we still miss the trimming of spurs to make it really good for practical etching at least with hobbyist means. Those spurs occur wherever the fill zone gets too thin, say smaller that the track width. I couldn't find a way to make it happen, it looks more complicated.

nice! I have just compiled it with today's release canidate. Certainly and improvement. This makes my life easier; I'm using a CNC mill to make boards and the smoother the curves, the less hand editing of isolation layers I have to do when setting up the milling software.

-ryan williams

R. Michael Sharkey escreveu:

I just uploaded "exp-kicad-lib.ulp" under the rm_sharkey_libs folder int he
files section of the group.

Hi.

It actually does a very nice job indeed. I did some quick tests here and
the results are great. Now, if we found a way to do the same with the
component symbols as well, I would take the responsability of converting
the whole Eagle colection.

[]s

Adilson.

Hello List,

I have posted the relevant files in the "F4EXB" folder in the files
section.

This fix makes nicer contours for the fill zone, at least that's what I
think, let me (and the List) know what you think.

Cheers, Edouard.

Bingo! This fixed the problem. Now the contours of the fill zone look
much nicer (smoother). I think we still miss the trimming of spurs to
make it really good for practical etching at least with hobbyist means.
Those spurs occur wherever the fill zone gets too thin, say smaller
that the track width. I couldn't find a way to make it happen, it looks
more complicated.

I will post before/after results so you'll be able to check for
yourselves if it is an improvement or not. Then I could ask to
integrate it in one of the next releases.

开云体育

I have uploaded a new release candidate on both kicad servers.
This is a bug fix release.

Well I think I've got it. You need to tell the compiler where to find
setup.h and it is not in the paths given.

So you need to amend line #327 of makeg95.env (in the 2005-08-29
version) in the main kicad-dev directory like this:

INC = -I$(WXDIR)/lib/wx/include/msw-ansi-release-static-2.6 -
I$(WXDIR)/lib/$(TOOLKIT)$(INCEXT) -I$(WXINC) -
I$(WXDIR)/contrib/include -I$(WXDIR)/src/regex -I$(WXDIR)/src/png -
I$(WXDIR)/src/jpeg -I$(WXDIR)/src/zlib -I$(WXDIR)/src/tiff $(EXTRAINC)
$(COMPPATHS) $(GNUWIN32EXTRA)

this adds $(WXDIR)/lib/wx/include/msw-ansi-release-static-2.6 in the
path since the setup.h is in the wx subdirectory from there.

An alternative is to use a symlink but MinGW/Msys does not support
symbolic links as such, it just copies the file.

I can now build Kicad without problems.

mrbeokay wrote:

I think that while in the fill zone mode you move the pointer inside the track, right click and choose "select net". Then you can do "fill zone" from anywhere outside the track.

Thanks that did the trick. I missed that function in the popupmenu
because its only available before one starts drawing the fill edges.
Arjan

you could also use the 'net highlight' tool. This took me forever to figure out actually. I would expect some option in the Fill dialog to select a net to connect to.

-ryan

--- In kicad-users@..., "Edouard Greiffiths" <f4exb@f...>
wrote:

Hi,

I think that while in the fill zone mode you move the pointer inside
the track, right click and choose "select net". Then you can do "fill
zone" from anywhere outside the track.

Thanks that did the trick. I missed that function in the popupmenu
because its only available before one starts drawing the fill edges.

Arjan

Hello,

I get a bunch of the following messages (here for gerbview):

Doudou@SEMPER /d/Programs/kicad-dev/gerbview
$ make -f makefile.g95
g++ -c -DWINVER=0x0400 -D__GNUWIN32__ -I/d/Programs/wxWidgets-
2.6.2/lib/msw -I/d/Programs/wxWidgets-2.6.2/include -
I/d/Programs/wxWidgets-2.6.2/contrib/include -I/d/Programs/wxWidgets-
2.6.2/src/regex -I/d/Programs/wxWidgets-2.6.2/src/png -
I/d/Programs/wxWidgets-2.6.2/src/jpeg -I/d/Programs/wxWidgets-
2.6.2/src/zlib -I/d/Programs/wxWidgets-2.6.2/src/tiff -DGERBVIEW -
DPCBNEW -I./ -I../gerbview -I../include -I../common -I../pcbnew -
I../3d-viewer -mno-cygwin -DSTRICT -DHAVE_W32API_H -Wall -O2 -
fno-rtti -fno-exceptions -o gerbview.o gerbview.cpp
In file included from d:/Programs/wxWidgets-
2.6.2/include/wx/defs.h:21,
from d:/Programs/wxWidgets-
2.6.2/include/wx/wxprec.h:13,
from ../include/fctsys.h:8,
from gerbview.cpp:8:
d:/Programs/wxWidgets-2.6.2/include/wx/platform.h:190:22: wx/setup.h:
No such file or directory
In file included from d:/Programs/wxWidgets-
2.6.2/include/wx/platform.h:258,
from d:/Programs/wxWidgets-
2.6.2/include/wx/defs.h:21,
from d:/Programs/wxWidgets-
2.6.2/include/wx/wxprec.h:13,
from ../include/fctsys.h:8,
from gerbview.cpp:8:
d:/Programs/wxWidgets-2.6.2/include/wx/chkconf.h:84:9:
#error "wxUSE_DYNLIB_CLASS must be defined."
d:/Programs/wxWidgets-2.6.2/include/wx/chkconf.h:92:9:
#error "wxUSE_EXCEPTIONS must be defined."
...

wxWidgets compiles fine under MinGW/MSys, I can build and run the
samples/minimal example.

Royce Pereira wrote:

Hi all,
How does one unroute a board that has been routed (in my case, automatically)?

In pcbnew select Miscellaneous/Global Deletions and in the dialog that pops up check the 'delete tracks' option then click the Accept button.

HTH

Ian


--
Ian T-Bell
aka RuffRecords
aka RedTommo
www.geocities.com/ruffrecords

Hi all,

How does one unroute a board that has been routed (in my case,
automatically)?

Thanks,

--Royce.

Hello list,

I have an update on this since I went a little bit further in examining
the code and playing around with the fill zone function.

It seems to me that the problem could come from the fact that the
clearance area is not determined the same way for vertical and
horizontal segments on one hand and oblique segments on the other hand.

Oblique segments have a rounded clearance area at the ends while
vertical and horizontal have a square one. When such segments are
joined together it does not fit nicely. If all ends were rounded there
wouldn't be a problem.

A solution could be to use the same algorithm regardless of the angle
of the segment. I think TraceSegmentQcq method in pcbnew/graphpcb.cpp
does this already but is presently used only for oblique segments (in
TraceSegmentPCB method).

This can possibly fix the problem. I couldn't have a go yet since for
now I did not succceed in building Kicad on a Windows box.

Hi,

I think that while in the fill zone mode you move the pointer inside
the track, right click and choose "select net". Then you can do "fill
zone" from anywhere outside the track.

Hello List,

I started using Kicad a few weeks ago and it seems a good program with
very high potential. Very good work mr Charras.
Befor I used an older comercial product, ultiboard but this had some
bugs and the never fixed these by now the are selling a new version
which is way to expensive. Therefeore I switched to Eagle which I
think is also very good. But I needed a larger board than was posible
with the free version. I was just about to buy a licence when by
acident I stumbeld upon Kicad. I had to get used to some differences
in workflow and think with some actions one has to click to much. But
maybe this will improve in the future.

Anyway my current question is how can I connect a copper fill to a net
so it will not keep clear of the tracks from the same net but run
throug them?

I could not find anything about this in the help file, but maybe I
overlooked.

Thanks for any help.
Arjan Bok

On Sunday 16 October 2005 02:16 pm, Adilson Oliveira wrote:

I was looking for a way to expand the Kicad libs

[clip]

I just uploaded "exp-kicad-lib.ulp" under the rm_sharkey_libs folder int he
files section of the group.

This is a ULP script to export EAGLE PCB parts to KiCAD. To use, open EAGLE
PCB, load the library you're interested in, into the library editor, and then
run this ULP script.

It has one bug that I have not gotten around to fix yet (I did not write this
script). The bug is in selecting the correct layer for the pads. However,
even in it's current state, you can manually edit the KiCAD output and touch
up the pads using search and replace, just compare with a similar "good"
KiCAD lib and you'll see what has to be modifed. Asside from that, it does a
pretty good job of exporting.....maybe if someone has some time they could
tweek this script a bit to make it work better.

--
Regards,

Mike Sharkey


Bradford, Ontario
CANADA

Adilson Oliveira wrote:

Hi.
I was looking for a way to expand the Kicad libs adn I found this text
about converting Orcad to eeschema.
This seens to be a little old but it really can convert all Orcad libs
to be used on Kicad? If so, why isn't have been done yet?

That' one of the reasons for this group, to do just this sort of thing.

We would end

up with a huge library.
I don't have access to Orcad but I'll surelly will try to find one if
this is really possible.

I have done a quick search on the web and it seems there are lots of free Orcad libraries out there. Maxim for instance provide them for some parts.

We need to coordinate this somehow and get the results into the group files section.

Ian

--
Ian T-Bell
aka RuffRecords
aka RedTommo
www.geocities.com/ruffrecords